Shayne Looper: Notre Dame: A metaphor for contemporary Christianity

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Apr 19, 2019 at 8:45 AM

Construction of The Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris (Our Lady of Paris) was begun in 1163 and consecrated to the Virgin Mary. When it was completed, approximately a century later, Notre Dame rose above Paris’s skyline, the city’s heart and its most glorious feature.

During the “Reign of Terror,” the Cathedral of Notre Dame was ransacked by revolutionaries bent on eradicating all traces of the Christian faith. The church was looted, Christian art destroyed and more than two dozen statues decapitated (this was 1793, the year Marie Antoinette was guillotined). Robespierre and other revolutionaries intended to replace Christianity with a religion more suited to the Enlightenment. Since the Cathedral was viewed as a symbol of Christianity, they hoped to destroy it.

The recent fire at Notre Dame, while not intentional (as far as we know), carries with it a strange symbolism. The Notre Dame Cathedral ceased to dominate Paris’s skyline long ago. The Eiffel Tower was built in 1889 as the entrance to the first World Fair. Since then many other skyscrapers have risen to dwarf the medieval cathedral.

Just as other buildings overtook the cathedral in the Parisian skyline, other beliefs have overtaken Christianity in the French mindset. A little more than 30 years ago, the proportion of the French population that identified as Christian was more than 80 percent. Some authorities now place that number at 51 percent. But even this number is misleading. Those who actually attend church services in any given week make up only 5 percent of the population.

The sudden devastation of the cathedral has received a great deal of attention in the media. Less attention has been given to the devastation of the Christian faith in France and around the western world. Christianity does not, and has not for many years, held the dominant place in the belief system of the French. And it is not much different in other parts of Europe. Church attendance in England, Sweden and Finland has fallen to about 5 percent. In Denmark it is even lower.

This has led some thinkers, either sadly or with a Robespierre-like glee, to forecast the end of Christian faith. The soaring edifice of science has eclipsed the humble faith of Jesus Christ in the eyes of many. They look at Christian faith the way most Parisians looked at Notre Dame: An emblem of the past, beautiful but impractical.

According to reports, the cathedral was undergoing some renovation when the fire broke out. Whether or not the fire was related to the renovation is, as yet, unknown, but this strikes me as another metaphor for what has been happening in Christianity. Some of those who love the Christian religion have tried to renovate it, to “bring it up to code,” so to speak; to bring it into compliance with contemporary values. The church’s inner struggles over sexual mores come to mind in this regard.

These attempts to renovate the faith, to adapt it to contemporary practice may actually hasten its demise. The devastating loss of membership among mainline denominations is a case in point.

Some thinkers anticipate the end of Christianity in the West over the next few generations. They join a cadre of others who have predicted its demise, some eagerly. Leading thinkers in the French Revolution foresaw the death of Christian faith. So did Marx, whose followers in Russia and China did all they could to exterminate Christianity. Nero attempted to do the same, long before Stalin and Mao.

All these attempts failed. When the French revolution ended, Notre Dame was still standing; Napoleon’s coronation took place there a decade later. Mao’s irreligious China is now home to more Christians than any nation on earth. The Soviets spread anti-Christian propaganda throughout the Union for decades, yet when John Paul II spoke in Poland, more than a million people gathered, chanting, “We want God! We want God!”

The first attempt to stamp out the faith preceded all of these and took place on a Roman cross. It initially seemed successful, but failed spectacularly when, three days later, Jesus rose from the grave. Various versions of Christianity might die. Christendom itself might expire. But, like its founder, faith in Jesus will not be kept down.Shayne Looper is the pastor of Lockwood Community Church in Branch County, Michigan. Read more at shaynelooper.com.

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